


Deus ex Machina

by Rhaella



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-10
Updated: 2008-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaella/pseuds/Rhaella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for 3.04, "I Am Become Death." Alternative future. Hiro (because even if Ando does kill him, you don't necessarily stay dead with a regen at hand) and a somewhat tamer Adam, after the events of the episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deus ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I’m concerned, the _utterly_ apocalyptic future of season three kind of vindicates Adam’s stance on matters. Because I tend to see him in part as a Cold War influenced eco-terrorist horrified by the prospect of nuclear devastation.

The television is playing in the next room, the sound too low for Hiro to make out the exact words. Still, he can hear the urgency in the voices, and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that something terrible has happened.

Unsurprising, though he fears that this means that Peter has failed in his goals. Avoiding the implications of that thought, Hiro pulls his sword – though it’s not his, not really – off the wall and walks through the doorway into the other room.

“And so it begins,” a voice sounds out. Hiro glances down to see Adam Monroe (he no longer calls him Takezo Kensei) stretched out casually across the couch, looking no different than he did four (or four hundred) years ago; he’s the only thing in the whole damn world – Hiro included – that has never changed.

That used to bother Hiro, back when the world still made some sort of sense. Now it is almost comforting.

“Tell me, carp,” Adam says, as if he has failed to notice that the name no longer describes Hiro. “Tell me what glorious promise you see in humanity today.” The words are deceptively light, but his face is paler than Hiro has ever before seen it.

It is an old question, and one Hiro has had to answer in a thousand different ways. Time and again, he had shown Adam the heights that humanity is capable of achieving – the beauty, the courage, the sacrifice, the _nobility_. Hiro feels suspiciously like the conscience of a wrathful god out of mythology. He often wonders why he does it, but every time Adam nods, and smiles, and ultimately _stays_ , he thinks that maybe Takezo Kensei isn’t quite dead after all.

Today he has no answer.

Staring at the television, he grips the hilt of his – _their_ – sword, and walks around the couch. Adam briefly glances up at him, and swings his legs around, sitting up. Numbly, Hiro sinks down beside him onto the couch. “Costa Verde,” he whispers. It’s not quite an answer to Adam’s question, but it speaks for itself. “200,000 people.”

“Gabriel lived there, didn’t he?” Adam comments, the words strangely distant. “I rather liked him.”

Hiro’s gaze shifts from the television to the man beside him – 200,000 people dead, and Adam can only think of one. Hiro tries not to be surprised. He knows that human life has no intrinsic value to a man who has watched empires crumble. Adam can only connect to people on an individual level, and even that is a challenge. “Yes, he did.” The words are empty, but Hiro has to say something.

Adam nods once, his expression unreadable. “Where is Peter?” he asks. “He meant to be here yesterday.”

Peter, carrying out his one-man war against a future that grows darker each time he tries to fix it. Peter, every day becoming more and more like the people against whom he has always fought. Adam calls it growth, but Hiro uses another word.

“I… do not know,” he admits.

Adam frowns, and Hiro remembers that the man’s inactivity, his current docility, is more a period of grace than anything else. He has a radically different interpretation of “save the world,” but they are all facing a future that none wants to see come to pass. Peter is not a disciple, not like Linderman or Maury Parkman once were, but he is still a powerful piece in motion. It is no wonder that Adam has been content to lay back and let matters play themselves out; Hiro only wonders what sort of contingency plans he has laid.

“He is dead,” Adam informs him bluntly, standing up and walking over to the other side of the room. He grabs a long, black coat, and starts to put it on.

“Where are you going?” Hiro demands.

Adam makes no reply. Instead, he asks mildly, “Do you know what a dead world looks like?”

“I…” Hiro breaks off, his blood running cold as he realizes that Adam Monroe is done waiting.

“Your _father_ —” (the word is laced with disdain and something more; Adam has never quite forgiven Nakamura Kaito for thirty years in a white room) “—named you after Hiroshima, carp, but you have no idea what that really means, do you?”

Hiro doesn’t answer. He simply watches as Adam sorts through the contents of his pocket. “I do, Hiro. There is more at stake here than humanity.” The words are certain, persuasive, and far more credible than they seemed four years ago. “Would that it were otherwise.”

“This is not a choice you have the right to make,” Hiro insists, but his eyes have shifted back to the television screen, and he can see just how many choices remain to them at all. He wonders if Adam has truly known for years that it would come to this.

The newscaster is speaking again, and both men listen carefully to the rumours of a superpowered army. Hiro knows what powers are available today, and what they’re capable of. He has seen what they can do to the fabric of reality itself.

Adam smiles, and it is bitter but resigned, as if he has long since come to terms with what the future must look like. “There is no right, Hiro. There is no wrong. Those rules are for a time that is now gone. For feudal Japan. For Victorian England.” He laughs, and the sound is sharp, and desperate, and more than a little insane. “Perhaps Peter will have succeeded in creating a better future, but _we_ are living in an era of gods, carp, and nobody is willing to take responsibility.”

Hiro watches him go. He watches the greatest potential mass murderer the world has ever seen walk out of his home, and he doesn’t lift a finger to stop him.


End file.
